My new electric Mantis is sitting in a box in the living room

[cmd]

I'm trying hard not to put it together and try it out. The soil is far too wet to till; but I'm getting antsy. I want to try out my new toy.:bounce:

[roguevalley]

1. do you have piccies?

[Kolesar]

2. I put down 250 sq ft of black plastic to warm our planting beds

Also sprinkled some micorhizza fungus all over the beds--we will see how that works. That has been my garden prep so far. Put in a huge number of vegetable seeds into starter containers yesterday. They are under fluorescent lighting.

My big experiment this year is going to be "early tomatos". Probably will order some Czech "Stupice" tomato starts from www.hirts.com garden. I read about these varieties in Mother Earth News.

[cmd]

3. Just spent the afternoon digging out some weeds that were flowering

It's still too wet, even in the raised beds, to use that tiller. Our garden turned to weeds when I went "political" last summer. If it doesn't rain tonight, and if the next two days are dry as predicted, I should be able to get onions and lettuce in the ground. My next chore will be digging wild onions out of a flower bed. I hate those devils.